Jones had vacated his WBC light heavyweight title after considering a move up to the heavyweight division. Graciano Rocchigiani had won the vacant title against Michael Nunn. WBC then gave the title back to Jones after the Hill fight and Rocchigiani sued the WBC for millions.
And won right? And then he went to jail or something and the WBC declared bankruptcy not to pay him? It was some strange story.
Jones was reportedly supposed to fight Buster Douglas, rather than his WBC mandatory Nunn, and he vacated his WBC title to make it happen. The WBC arranged an elimination fight for the vacant title between Nunn and Rocchigiani, which Rocchigiani won, after which Jones backed out of his fight with Douglas (Douglas then went on to fight Savarese instead, I believe, and got KO'd in 1). Jones simply asked the WBC for his title back, and they just gave it to him. Rocky sued the WBC for a colossal amount, something like 50 or 100 million. The WBC tried to claim that Roy had never vacated his title, and that it had never meant the Rocky-Nunn fight to be an eliminator (it tried to claim that all the times the fight was billed as an eliminator, and the announcement of Rocky as the new champion were all "mistakes", no joke). The judge didn't buy that crap, and he awarded the money to Rocky. The WBC filed for bankruptcy, and Rocky and them settled out of court for a lesser amount. However, the judge also ruled that Rocky was the holder of the WBC title during the stretch of years between his win over Nunn and his eventual loss to Dariusz, and not Roy.
Yeah I remember some crazy story like that. Forgot about the Douglas fight. I do remember Douglas was set to fight Tyson had he made it through the next fight. That would have been ugly. I really enjoyed watching Douglas comeback from the coma. I felt bad for him once he got KO'd by Savarese. I bought that worthless PPV.
